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Yora
2013-12-13, 09:08 AM
I am going to start a new game in two weeks. Two of the players have played RPGs before a couple of times, the other four havn't. But all are big RPG videogame and fantasy fans. Since we just started University together and it's already a larger group, this seems like a real opportunity to run a longer campaign over two to three years, even if some players might drop out and new ones join later on.
I've already decited on using Castles & Crusades, which takes a major portion off the preparation workload compared to d20 games, and in turn offers much more freedom where the campaign might go. (Since I can come up with new NPCs and enemies on the fly and can prepare for multiple possible routes without wasting lots of time on preparing for nothing.)

So really, the best situation a GM can hope for.

But right now, I really have no idea what type of campaign this is going to be.

I've been working on a setting for the last 5 or so years, so I really want to use it for something bigger than a few one-shots. It's a Bronze Age/Iron Age setting that blends pre-medieval North and East European with ancient East-Asia and classic fantasy races. So there will be lots of tiny barbarian kingdoms and it will lean heavily towards Sword & Sorcery (like Conan, Dark Sun, and The Witcher). I like Skyrim and so do most of the players, so you can imagine the social and political landscape somewhat like the Jarls and the Holds of the Nord, but elves, gnomes, and lizardfolk also follow that model of society. It also follows the Points of Light principle, with the strongholds of tribal chiefs and the nearby villages serving as small islands of civilization in a massive and mostly uninhabited wilderness. Which of course is still full with dangerous monsters and fey.
PCs are not wandering mercenaries, but young level warriors and apprentice shamans, who do their part in keeping the territory of the clan reasonably safe and watch the borders for possible threats.

Doing something sandboxy would be an obvious choice, but I don't want to make it a pure hexcrawl. I think these are rather bland.
I think what would probably work better is to make a large overland map for one big valley that is home to a handful of clan strongholds and then introduce three or four threats that are going to upset things in the region on the long term. The players would then be given free reign to take on one or two of these threats, by investigating their nature, sabotaging plans, and fighting the enemies henchmen, to keep their clan and its allies safe.

Sounds like a good setup for a campaign so far.
But I really have no idea where to begin. :smallannoyed:

Kaveman26
2013-12-13, 09:21 AM
Could work your way into an invasion scenario. From you are describing having the equavilent of Romans invading could be intriguing. Even just a single legion. Initially you have scouts and vanguard outposts of a strange race/culture popping up and searching places they are not meant to enter. As they establish forts and a foothold on the lands, the tribes of humanoids are displaced and encroach on the pc's territory. Eventually the privelaged and wealthy bored general of the invasion force begins full scale attacks on communities and the players spearhead an insurgency.

Romans is just the basis for the force, could be drow, or a race that fell from prominence ages ago and is now returning.

As the foreign influences grow the sense of nationalism or tribalism in regions grows leading to smaller scale King Arthur types that the group can assist or oppose. Tie in events to the ancestry of the lands,so that relics of symbolic nature or mystical power are more than mcguffins but integral parts of rallying the locals or opposing the invaders.

Yora
2013-12-13, 09:43 AM
While I am generally much more in favor of personal character driven adventures and not so much big war campaigns, I think that's probably still a good idea for a general background or starting situation. A new power group enters the field, upsetting the established balance, and the PCs have to see how to use the changes to their advantage and not going under.

One of the big power groups are a great movement of warrior monks, like the Mandalorians and Qunari, or the Astartes from Warhammer 40k. Not neccessarily invading, but simply establishing a new local stronghold and offering their services to the local chiefs. With these additional elite troops, all kinds of old conflicts could be fought out in the open again.

Actana
2013-12-13, 09:44 AM
Could work your way into an invasion scenario. From you are describing having the equavilent of Romans invading could be intriguing. Even just a single legion. Initially you have scouts and vanguard outposts of a strange race/culture popping up and searching places they are not meant to enter. As they establish forts and a foothold on the lands, the tribes of humanoids are displaced and encroach on the pc's territory. Eventually the privelaged and wealthy bored general of the invasion force begins full scale attacks on communities and the players spearhead an insurgency.

Romans is just the basis for the force, could be drow, or a race that fell from prominence ages ago and is now returning.

As the foreign influences grow the sense of nationalism or tribalism in regions grows leading to smaller scale King Arthur types that the group can assist or oppose. Tie in events to the ancestry of the lands,so that relics of symbolic nature or mystical power are more than mcguffins but integral parts of rallying the locals or opposing the invaders.

I was going to post something, but this is exactly what I had in mind, right down to Romans and King Arthur. Establish the setting with a few smaller, possibly diplomatic missions to other tribes, and foreshadow the arrival of the totally-not-Romans in some way. Then, have a vanguard annex some piece of land, either peacefully or by force, and gradually escalate the threat until the PCs are facing their entire army, and have to unite the tribes to save them, or join the totally-not-Romans in their quest to civilize the population.

It would be quite sandboxy, but also allows for structured missions too (get the help of tribe of Formidable Spearmen, who want you to do find the Spear of Destiny so that they can all unite under one banner).



Edit: since you responded already, I had another idea, though rather centric towards only one PC. Check out the Varangian Guard. One of the players would be part of this group (if there's an equivalent. If not, maybe the warrior monks you speak of?), but is also some exiled/bastard child of an important tribe. They receive some sort of news that they're needed in their hometribe, as the ruler died and they're the next in line of succession. They'd be honor-bound to reclaim their place at the head of the tribe, but at the same time would need to desert the totally-not-Varangians. It's a bit exclusive to one character, but could be an exciting setup for that character, as they will have to do political manuevering in their old and familiar yet changed tribe, when all they're used to is fighting.

Kaveman26
2013-12-13, 09:54 AM
It doesn't have to be war scenario. Could come down to the group calling in a bunch of favors in order to unite long divided tribes. As they spend the next 18 months traveling and building connections, the people they interact with will be ones facing large scale conflict.

Heck conflict isn't even required, just upsetting the status quo.

Grey Watcher
2013-12-13, 10:16 AM
I'd suggest letting your PCs come up with adventure goals. A campaign I'm playing in got kicked off when our masters (we're all specialist Wizards) all (apparently?) died in a mysterious accident. Between investigating what happened and having to shore up the town's defenses, we (the players) were able to come up with a few plot hooks ("Visit the wisest of the Sea Hags and find out what they know about the accident" and "Secure the nearby river so the villagers can fish there"). Our DM then went and created adventures, which sometimes lead to other plot hooks (for example, the sea hag quest led us to rescuing her sister from orc, but then we found out that the hags were kidnapping and eating orc babies, so we kinda turned on the witches). Between plot hooks dropped by the DM in quests and random bits of inspiration we players have had ("Let's go rescue the Elf Queen from Azalea's backstory!" "I want to find a special component that will help me craft my Awesome Staff.") we've got a number of cool plotlines going (for example, the latter of those two has now generated a quest to reclaim Mortre's Tomb from the evil that infests it).

Obviously, this depends heavily on your players, and it definitely helps if they can give you ideas as far in advance as possible, but, at least from the player end, it looks like a good system to generate adventures and plotlines with varying lengths and keeps us feeling involved.

Anyway, it seemed like a good fit for the kind of campaign you want to run.

Yora
2013-12-13, 10:25 AM
In the long run, that's kind of what I have in mind. But given that most of the players never played any RPGs before and the other two don't have a lot of experience either, and none of them know anything about the setting, I think they will need a clearly stated goal for the first two or three adventures. Once they know who their characters are in that world, who the major groups are, and what's going on, they should be able to make descisions that will determine the general direction for the upcomming adventures.

Joe the Rat
2013-12-13, 11:59 PM
You have a setting, but the players aren't hooked into it right away (as in they aren't planning for that specific world - if they're planning at all). Having an adventure hook/subplot for each player would be good. Rather that simply handing them out at random, ask what sorts of storylines or quests or events the player would like to see, then discuss a story lead that fits with that.

One question would be whether you'd do better with a story start or an action start: Put them in plot right away, or throw them into a scenario so they can learn a bit more of the rules, and the setting, maybe a little crawling, maybe a fetch quest from the local Jarl. Then start bringing in story as they get into the hang of it.

Yora
2013-12-14, 03:51 AM
I think I will start out fairly simple. Go to a place, deal with the dangers, get the thingy and bring it back. It will be confusing enough for the new players and I think they should get the hang of the combat system fairly quickly by doing a good deal of varied encounters on the first day. Getting creative and proactive comes later. I want to avoid the "Metal Gear Solid Effect", where you are spending hours with learning about the story while itching to wrap up the process of learning the controlls. :smallamused:

But I think what I really need right now is a "metaplot". It's a terrible thing for published settings, but I think basically what open-world campaigns are about. Some ideas I'd like to use, maybe they give you ideas what else I could do:

Anyone of the Heidelberg group who finds this, obviously don't read this!
> The region is a river valley about two weeks of travel long and four days of travel across.
> Near the river there are a couple of settlements of humans, who had migrated to the area some 100 years ago.
> The forest north of the valley is home to elves.
> The hills at the source of the river include one gnomish mining camp and some harpy nests and a few trolls (ogres).
> Also in the hills is an old dormant volcano. A crater lake formed at the top and because the ground is a bit unstable there are lots of cracks and water from the lake created lots of caves in the mountainsides, which had been used by early primitive elves as burrial sites. The present day elves have stopped going there a long time ago, but there are still some of the ancient ancestors (wights) sleeping in many of the tombs.
> A unit of Warrior-Monks comes into the valley, seeking to establish a base to ire themselves out as mercenaries and recruiting new converts from the local clans. The clans don't want to lose any of their own warriors, but many chiefs are quite interested in using the mercenaries to break up long stalemates with their rivals.
> In the forests south of the valley is an ancient city build by the fey during the period they lived in the world of mortals for a time, but now the site has been taken over by human settlers who are not aware of the ruins origin. In the dungeons deep below the ruins, the fey left behind a dormant aboleth, that can be reawaken by refilling the pool with water. He has vast amounts of knowledge about the ancient era and would trade some of it for helping him back into the underworld. But he knows how valuable he would be to anyone who revive him, so he will use his telepathic powers to manipulate the villagers into flooding the ruins, rather than relying on people who would prefer to keep him trapped.

One theme that is a major aspect of the setting, is the conflict between druids and sorcerers. The druids are a lose affiliation of shamans who cooperate to fight the spread of supernatural corruption that taints and poisons the land. Sorcerers are witches and mages who are exploring the magical properties of the demon world, but using this knowledge to enhance their spells corrupts the surrounding environment and the creatures targeted by their spells. The demon world is incompatible with the mortal world, so the use of sorcery makes creatures sick and can cause them to mutate.
It's inspired a bit by the ancient Jedi and Sith from Star Wars, the Defilers and Preservers from Dark Sun, or the Maleficar from Dragon Age, but there is no objective good or evil. Some sorcerers don't want to cause any harm, but might overestimate their ability to contain the Corruption, while some druids will whipe out any source of corruption without asking any questions.
In some way this should come up during the campaign, but I'm not sure if I want a powerful group of sorcerers as one of the primary antagonists. But given most players are new to RPGs, it might not be the worst idea to be a bit blunt and straightforward at times.

The ruined city surely has enough potential to be a mini-campaign in itself, but I think that one would be better to delay until the PCs have reached a higher level
With the warrior monks, I like the idea of making them appear so cool, that the players might be tempted to forsake their clan and join them. When playing DA2, I really would have loved to become a Qunari.

I think this already looks like a pretty decent sandbox there. But still, I need a few ideas to kick things into motion.

BeerMug Paladin
2013-12-14, 03:17 PM
How about a planar bleed is gradually starting to form? A group of druids have identified a location that is forming aberrations at higher than average rate. There's a wizard's tower in the location, but as far as they know the wizard doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.

The wizard does know about the strange happenings, and has been studying it, but doesn't know what is going on. But he does know that if the process continues, a natural gateway could develop, and all sorts of creatures from beyond could pour through the portal.

There's a particular point where the magical energy is strongest, and if this thing is left alone, that point is where the gateway will appear. As knowledge of this thing forms, cults could form to worship it, and some could try to use it to pull in servants from beyond. The specific location might be known by one of these groups.

Meanwhile, it is revealed that in the distant past, these sorts of planar bleeds were much more common. The ancients did use some kind of controlling artifact to control and guide the bleeds, which could still be somewhere in the nearby ruins.

Eventually, the goal would be to seal the specific point, using the controlling artifact to seal it and hold it shut, to allow time for the location to 'heal'. Possibly allowing the druids to then guard over it, and make sure no harm comes to the area to tear it open again. Doing so could require a number of rare items brought to the location in order to complete the ritual needed.

Maybe doing so might require that the druids and the nearby wizard work together, since each of them has important knowledge of the problem.

Yora
2013-12-14, 04:15 PM
I didn't mention the specific unique cosmology of my setting and the roles of demons and aberration, but there's actually still a lot of really good idea fragments in your suggestions, that just would need a minor amount of reshuffling to fit quite perfectly.

In the Ancient Lands setting that I've been creating, the material world is a region of the primal chaos that has kind of solidified and started to work by a number of physical laws. The aberrations that inhabit the underworld are creatures from a time, when these laws of nature were not yet as strict as they are now. In fact, in the very beginning of time, the spirits of the chaos could just enter and leave the newly forming universe without problem. Now the original spirits still in the chaos are called demons and those that got trapped when the borders became solid are now aberrations.

Instead of an artifact to close the strengthens the borders, the ancient aberrations would instead have created one that keeps their environment as chaotic as they were used to. The creatures coming through wouldn't be aberrations but demons, but the end result would still be basically the same.

I ran one short Ancient Lands game before and I had two ideas I had wanted to use for an online game this year, that didn't get of the ground. I think I'll be using all three ideas combined with yours, and it should be really quite awesome.
If anyone is interested, here are the (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15934008&postcount=1) links (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15827338&postcount=129).
Now if someone ends up bringing that artifact into one of these gateway zones, it should be able to draw in massive amounts of demon energy, and then things will get epic. :smallbiggrin:

BeerMug Paladin
2013-12-14, 04:46 PM
I didn't mention the specific unique cosmology of my setting and the roles of demons and aberration, but there's actually still a lot of really good idea fragments in your suggestions, that just would need a minor amount of reshuffling to fit quite perfectly.

I figured my suggestion would need some tweaking, but I figured it wouldn't be hard to bring something like that into the game based on what you implied. (I wasn't sure if wizards existed, or if there were only sorcerers, for one thing.)

The cosmology stuff for the setting was interesting to read.

Kitten Champion
2013-12-14, 07:00 PM
How about an escort mission as a sort of tutorial level?

The warrior monks seem like they could tip the balance of power in the region while they are a potential threat in and of themselves, especially if they start recruiting warriors. Something like Akatsuki from Naruto, but not nearly so villainous, is what I'm thinking.

Well, that seems like a good reason for allied clans to meet and hammer out some accord of how they intend to approach this new faction. An emissary, perhaps a son or daughter of the PC's clan chief, is being sent to another clan's hold a ways away, and the players have been tasked to see him/her safely. This creates an opportunity for your standard travelling encounter, introducing them to fighting. The emissary could be young, largely picked for status rather than skill, so the PCs could be asked to advise him/her. This lets them participate indirectly while you explain some of the political details of your world.

However the conference turns out - I'd let the players ultimately decide what the clan will do, but my group likes doing that kind of stuff - it ends in a departing-night feast. During this, the hosting clan chief falls over dead, poisoned apparently.

There is a whodunit section where everyone comes under suspicion, and players investigate. The assailant tries to pin the murder on one of the players, but is found out, before he/she can be questioned he/she kills her/himself.

The assassination could be tied into the druid/sorcerer conflict, being an agent for one side or the other. This could be their way of undermining other side's power base, or something similar.

Personally I'd pick the druids as the culprits, the chief had been using sorcery to keep his/her child/spouse alive (or some similarly sympathetic motivation). You could remark about how the land around the clanhold is looking particularly dreary, with dead/corrupted plants. You could also point out the physical corruption of the murdered chief, that s/he looks more pale and less hearty than the last time s/he and your emissary character met. It'd make the druids seem more morally grey, willing to take action to prevent despoiling even when done for benevolent or benign reasons. Even if they don't notice the blight created by sorcery, it'll be something they can call back to when they know comfortably how magic in this world works.

The death could broadly change the politics in the region, and the subtler conflict between the magical factions which is the broader concern of the campaign.

Yora
2013-12-16, 03:32 PM
A little update on my plans. I just had a moment of insight, remembering that there was a videogame which completely wasted a totally awesome setup. And now it came back to me, that this was Dragon Age. It looked like a huge pileup of conspiracy, but in the end what looked like the first step to a grand plan was just the only step in a really foolish plan.

The Locations
River Valley: The river valley is settled by the human clans.
Elven Forest: The forests north of the valley are home to the elves.
South Forest: The forest to the south of the valley is mostly unihabited, but home to a much higher number of spirits and monsters than the rest of the region.
Ancient Ruin: This is a 4,000 year old ruin build by fey who have since abandoned it. However, they left behind an aboleth they had captured and forced into hybernation by dehydrating it. A few years ago, some desperate refugees from the Southlands have build a small village in the ruins.
Hills: The hills are in the west, where the north forest and south forest would meet. Home to trolls, harpies and other unpleasant folk.
Volcano: The volcano has been dormant for a very long time, but is full of caves and fissures that have been used by savage ancient elves as burrial sites and places of worships for creatures from the Underworld.
Gnome Town: A gnome mining camp in the hills, two days travel from the volcano. Unknown to the gnomes, there are caves and tunnels that connect their mines to the volcano.

The Artifact
Pretty much just a generic McGuffin. It's an artifact that can provide great power to a disciple of aberration magic. It was worshipped as an idol by the ancient elves of the volcano.

The Factions
The Clans: Most of the clans really just want to survive the current turbulences with minimal losses and stop the factions that are causing damage, but many of them chiefs also see it as a good opportunity to strike at rivals who they could normally not attack.
The Warrior Monks: The Warrior-Monks want to establish a base, recruit more converts, and find employment as mercenaries, doing the thing they live for.
The Wights: The wights are descendants of the ancient elves and rest in the tombs and burrial chambers of the volcano. They know quite a bit about the artifact and its background, and a group of them has risen from their eternal sleep to join the hunt for it.
The Aboleth: The aboleth also knows a good deal of information about the artifact and the ancient elves. He claims he is willing to trade his knowledge for any assistance that helps him getting back to the Underworld, but once he learns that there's a hunt for the artifact going on, he changes his plan to contacting other aboleths to get reinforcements and the neccessary resources to start creating skum from captive humans.
Modern Cultists: The cultists worship the Great Old Ones and practice blood magic, but they are mostly philosopical types searching for perfection in mind and body. They regard themselves as sages and keepers of an old myytic religion and do not really pose a danger. Given their practices and the current situation, their claims to be peaceful would probably meet a lot of doubt. They can be great providers of exposition and could also be of help in safely disposing of the artifact, should the players come to possess it.

The Timetable
- Everything is set into motion when an elven sorcerer starts searching for the artifact. His search leads him eventually to the volcano where he makes a deal with the wights, who see it as a service to their aberration god.
- With the help of the wights, the sorcerer creates an army of ghouls, and dread warriors (corpses possessed by minor demons). To keep it secret, the army mostly stays underground but starts harrassing the gnomes, who have no idea of the undeads origin.
- The sorcerer revives the aboleth to get at its knowledge, but the aboleth instead enthralls the villagers above to secretly aid it in its plan to flood the dungeons, connecting it to an aboleth city in the Underworld.
- With the undead horde emerging, some of the clans ally to destroy them before they get out of the hills and swarm into the valley, and they even get the Warrior-Monks on board. But one of the chiefs is in league with the sorcerer and lures the joint army into a trap. Hope I can pull this off with the PCs participating while avoiding TPK. :smallamused:
- The Warrior-Monks take massive losses, but the survivors could make really cool allies for the PCs, especially if they were previously regarded as almost enemies.
- The assistant of the modern cultists plans to kill her leader, betray the cult, and join the Big Bad. If the cult helps the PCs in containing the artifact, she will steal it and join the wights, planning to use the artifact to take over the undead army.

--

Sounds really quite great so far. It could be said it's a bit underhanded because no matter what faction the PCs will ally or join with, it will come to bite them in the ass some way. But in good Old-School tradition: Everything is fair in GMing if it increases the fun and excitement for the players. :smallbiggrin:
However, there is still one big and glaring flaw, at the one point where it matters most: What is the sorcerer going to do once he has the artifact and his army? Why is he threatening the valley? Being Evil (TM) and wanting to conquer all he sees would be rather disapointing. Revenge at his village who cast him out for his dark research would also be a bit lame. What I would prefer is a situation in which the valley is mostly collateral damage. Destroying many of the villages and clans isn't the goal of the whole affair, but rather something that just happens because that's a sacrifice he's willing to make.

veti
2013-12-16, 04:40 PM
My first thought, when I read your synopsis, was a campaign a friend of mine once planned but never got off the ground, set in northern Europe in the middle ages, where political, religious and ethnic conflicts are all jumbled together in a big bloody mess. If you've played Medieval II Total War: the Teutonic campaign expansion, you'll have an idea of the basic setup.

There's at least three religious factions (Catholic, Orthodox and pagan), none of which can stand either of the others (and sub-factions within each); there are numerous would-be kings who range from "honestly trying to keep order against impossible odds" to "random warlords who fancy their own chances", plus the Teutonic Knights (heavily armed thugs who answer to nobody but their own general); and there's rumours and hints and forerunners of what will eventually grow into the Mongol invasion. Huge kudos to the party if they can come up with a way of stopping or deflecting that.

Remember, all conflict is ultimately about land: who's going to occupy it and who's going to exploit it. It's the ultimate finite resource: if land were unlimited, we'd've had world peace centuries ago.

Yora
2013-12-16, 06:17 PM
Land doesn't really work that well in this particular setting since a very major trait of the world is, that it is extremely sparsely settled. However, that still leaves relatively small areas of extremely valuable resources other than high yield farming land. Could be gold, but in a setting like this, also iron. Tin is relatively rare but indispensible for bronze production, which can be the only really useful metal if the making of quality steel is still unavailable.
What always caught my interest is the fact that for industrial resources, it isn't really so much important to control the deposits, but to get them to your customers. Controling rivers, bridges, passes, and crossroad towns can make you quite powerful, because all merchants have to give you a cut of their profits unless they want to take a potentially significant detour. Which would still force them to pay taxes and tolls to a different lord.

Back to my problem with the villains motivation, I think I found a good solution. He isn't really interested in destroying settlements, but instead he wants to get his hands on things that are in the settlements and can not be retrieved by a thief. So instead he has the wights and their undead horde clear the path. And while undead don't have to worry a lot about reliable supply routes, it's still a good strategic idea to neutralize possible military threats in advance.